That Time My Dog Made A Complete Fool Of Me While My Pants Fell Down

My husband and I got a puppy pretty much the minute we returned from our honeymoon. She wasn’t a brand-new baby pup, but she was only about a year old. Trixie was perfect for a young couple who just wanted something to nurture. She could do tricks, she was house-trained, and she was so cute. We don’t know exactly what kind of dog she was, but she was the right one for us.

Trixie and I peacefully co-existed, but my husband was her person.

She fell in love with Scott right away. If he was home, I was invisible. That was okay with me. She and I had an understanding. Trixie would hunt every bug that dared to cross our home’s threshold, and I would pat her little head and let her sleep at the foot of our bed. She lived the rest of her life with us, eventually becoming a constant companion for our two little boys. Three years ago, on a sunny December afternoon, we had to say goodbye and kiss her little head before laying her to rest in the shade of her favorite tree, right under the bird feeder where she would want to be.

When I talk about Trixie now that she’s gone, I sometimes accidentally make her sound like a peaceful, obedient dog, but don’t let my nostalgia fool you.

Trixie was absolutely bonkers when she wanted to be, and when she was young and full of energy, she wanted to be bonkers about 76 percent of the time. She was exhausting.

When my oldest son was about eighteen months old, my husband went away for military training for eight months. My baby and I lived with my best friend’s family while he was away, and planned to buy a home when he returned.

Keep in mind that Trixie’s one and only person was away, and I was not, in her estimation, a reasonable substitute. Those eight months were Trixie’s rumspringa. All rules were out the window until Scott returned. She just assumed she was experiencing a world where she was the boss of herself, and she was loving it.

One lovely summer evening, I decided to take my dog for a ride to my parents’ house as a nice little treat.

The old girl loved the car, and I loved the old girl, in spite of her tomfoolery and shenanigans. What could go wrong?

When it was time to go, I was the picture of a young mom who had it all together. Adorable baby on my hip. Perfectly stocked diaper bag on my shoulder. Loyal canine companion trotting next to me.

Leash? We don’t need no stinkin’ leash. We are walking straight to the car, and Trixie is going to hop right in to the passenger seat as she always does. I am a grown-ass lady who has her life together. I am a strong, independent military spouse doing it all at home while my husband serves his country. I’m humming, “I am strong. I am invincible. I am womaaaaaan.”

I’ve totally got this.

And I would have totally had it.

If only that the moment I opened the door, my eagle-eyed pooch spotted a neighbor walking his dogs approximately 657 miles down the road and decided this was the time to shirk all of her training and beeline toward him, barking like mad.

He was walking a gigantic black pit bull, and some kind of fluffy little cocker spaniel or something, and for a second my heart skipped a beat. The cocker might be a fair fight, but that big black behemoth could bite Trixie’s overly confident face right off.

Only instead of reacting to my mongrel, the giant and fluffball alike just sat down at their owner’s side and stared at her like she had two heads. That’s what well-trained animals do, I guess. I wouldn’t know. My animal was Trixie, and nobody would have described her as well-trained.

I knew I needed to go after my speeding dog, but if you’ll remember, at that very moment I was holding my baby.

So, I did what any good mom would do, and I literally dumped him into his car seat without buckling him and went running after my wild animal. He immediately stood up and watched out the window as his chunky mama, who had not run a single step since high school gym class, took off running down the street in a pair of Old Navy rubber flip flops.

I was wearing a long t-shirt over leggings, which sounds like perfectly acceptable running attire, only these particular leggings were leftover from my pregnancy, and the elastic had seen better days. I was about five steps into my dog-retrieval mission when my pants started to roll down, catching the waistband of my underwear and rolling those away, too.

So, just to recap the scene at this point…

We’ve got a brindle-colored, short-legged mutt barking like mad. She is positively zooming toward an absolutely stunned neighbor who was just trying to walk his two perfect angel dogs. A fat woman is running clumsily behind, holding her pants up with one hand, diaper bag still on her shoulder, waving her free hand wildly and screaming, “She’s friendly! She got away from me! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Trixie! Get back here! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!!!”

As if this wasn’t enough chaos and humiliation for one night, at this exact moment, my husband decides to call me from his dorm.

As my diaper bag starts blaring his personalized ringtone at top volume, I am instantly overcome with regret about my decision to download the world’s stupidest ringer: A reggae jingle with the lyrics, “It’s your husband, ooh yeah. Yes, your husband is trying to get through.”

But there was one tiny silver lining. After months of FaceTime and phone calls preceded by that stupid freaking noise, Trixie associated that moronic sound with the one person on earth that she felt like she needed to obey; my husband. As soon as she heard it (but after she subjected me to what must have been 16 hours and 647 miles of running to catch her) Trixie just stopped in her tracks, turned around and trotted back, then hopped in the car and acted like nothing happened.

The neighbor was still a few houses down, walking his good dogs back slowly to avoid my absolutely bananas animal.

I hurriedly buckled the baby, hopped in the car and decided I would just speed away to avoid the angry neighbor and maybe deliver some cookies to his house with an apology note the next morning.

That is when I realized I left my car keys in the house.

So much for being a grown-ass lady who has her life together. I hummed that Helen Reddy tune just a bit prematurely.

I endured the long, sad walk of shame into the house, and made it back outside just in time to cross paths with the neighbor, mumble another apology and return Scott’s call to inform him that his faithful hound companion was, in fact, an asshole.

The icing on the cake?

This all took place on August 26th — National Dog Day. Trixie wasn’t perfect, but, damn, that mutt really knew how to celebrate.